Scituate police chief frets about cliff-dive craze

Saturday

May 3, 2014 at 6:00 AMMay 5, 2014 at 9:39 PM

Egged on by social media, some local teenagers and 20-somethings are taking high-dive plunges off rocky ledges and bridges into ice-cold ocean water, police said Friday. A Scituate teenager nearly drowned Thursday afternoon in the Minot section of town after jumping from a 25-foot high ledge and getting swept out by currents, but some locals say the “polar plunges” have gone viral with young Facebook users in town.

Chris Burrell The Patriot Ledger @Burrell_Ledger

SCITUATE – Egged on by social media, some local teenagers and 20-somethings are taking high-dive plunges off rocky ledges and bridges into ice-cold ocean water, police said Friday.A Scituate teenager nearly drowned Thursday afternoon in the Minot section of town after jumping from a 25-foot-high ledge and getting swept out by currents, but some locals say the “polar plunges” have gone viral with young Facebook users in town.

“It’s this polar plunge craze. You get nominated from Facebook and you have 24 hours to jump and nominate five other people to do it, too,” said Skyler Kerner, a 20-year-old Scituate resident who was walking up to the Minot cliffs Friday afternoon with a friend. “The clock’s ticking.”

Scituate Police Chief Michael Stewart stopped the women and is trying to put a stop to the craze, calling the practice very risky.

“If you jump off a bridge or a ledge where there’s limited opportunities to get out of the water, it’s dangerous,” Stewart said Friday afternoon, standing on the high cliffs known to locals as Pirachi and Open Fields.

“You see that plume out there? That’s the current,” Stewart said, peering down at the white foam and waves crashing onto craggy boulders where the 17-year-old jumped Thursday. “The water is 45 degrees. The currents pulled him out, and he had to swim around that corner. It was a hundred-yard swim.”

Three other teenagers watched the boy jump from the ledge, Stewart said.

“They were videotaping it,” Stewart said. “He started screaming for help. He was cramping up.”

When emergency personnel arrived, the boy was on the beach, suffering from effects of hypothermia.

“He was lethargic, exhausted. He could barely walk and could barely talk,” Stewart said.

As Stewart was walking back to his vehicle, two young women carrying towels came up the narrow road leading to the ledges and told Stewart – dressed in civilian clothing – that they planned to jump off the high cliff.

“We were going to do Cohasset bridge, but we thought too many others had done it,” said Sarah Colameco, a 21-year-old Scituate resident who works at a restaurant in Hull.

After Stewart stopped them and told them about the dangers, Kerner explained the social-media craze feeding the polar plunges.

“It’s gone viral. Right now, Scituate is going crazy with it,” said Kerner, a Scituate High School graduate who just finished her first semester at Emerson College.

Kerner and Colameco said jumping from the cliffs was something of an initiation rite when they were in middle school together. And different points on the ledges have different names.

“Open Fields is the scary one where you go between the two rocks,” Colameco said.

And Kerner agreed with Stewart’s assessment of the risks.

“The hardest part of jumping off is getting back up,” she said. “You lose your footing because the rocks get slippery.”

And Stewart reminded them of another cold reality. The site where they stood is very isolated and hard to reach for emergency crews.

“If you get into trouble,” he said, “you could die before we’re able to get here.”

Neither Kerner nor Colameco had heard of Thursday’s near-drowning, and they didn’t know the water was only 45 degrees.

“That is so scary,” Colameco said before she and Kerner turned around and walked back to their pickup truck.

Christopher Burrell may be reached at cburrell@ledger.com. Follow on Twitter @Burrell_Ledger.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.